This invention is in the field of safety helmets having form-fitting protective headgear liners and their fabrication. Protective headgear or safety helmets are well known and used in many fields of endeavor such as firefighting, construction work, police work, and sports as well as by aircraft crew members. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,901,750; 2,901,751; 2,908,943; 3,320,619 and 3,413,656 disclose safety helmets of various constructions.
In many instances, it is advantageous to have a liner which may be inserted between a hard outer protective shell and the individual wearer's head and which will fit snugly and conform exactly to the shape of the wearer's head. One such instance is in the case of an aircraft crew member who, in the course of his duty, is subjected to very large fluctuations in gravity pull. In the past, off the shelf type headgear or helmets worn by aircraft crew members have not had form-fitting liners and have tended to move from side to side or from back to front (or the reverse) when the wearer was subjected to fluctuations in gravitational pull. Such headgear movements have been known to cause injury to the wearer.
Methods have been devised for fabricating form-fitting headgear liners. These methods have required that a mold of the wearer's head be prepared before fabrication of the liner can be accomplished. The required mold-making and other complicated steps required in the prior art have caused the methods to be time consuming and expensive. Furthermore, liners prepared by the prior art methods have tended to be heavy and thus uncomfortable to the wearer.